SURELY YOUR JOKING


Richard Feymann (1985). Surely You're Joking Mr. Feyman!                                                      Adventures of a Curious Character.


Feyman (pronounced "Fine-man") is a noble prize winning physicist. The book draws on interviews with him that narrate stories chronologically from the time of his life as a boy in his own laboratory to working on the first bomb to teaching physics at several universities to travel abroad. 


Things that resonated with me:

  • Do things for the FUN of it, just to play around...one of the best ways to learn.
  • Don't trust an expert's opinion about research--read the original research yourself and make up your own mind, and if it's possible and important, do your own calculations to confirm the numbers.
  • For any theory/model being explained, consider a specific instance/case, and follow it through as it is explained...where the example breaks down, ask questions, and if they cannot be answered, there is an error in the theory/model.
  • Get into something new and see how far you can take it...this is a pattern in Feyman's life, he learns a new skill and takes it as far as he can and then gives up to take on another skill, e.g. drumming, drawing, picking locks...
  • Consider going to the 2nd or 3rd best school for an education, or to an organization for employment since the top or best school/organization often has much more competition for resources...more opportunities exist at the lower tiers.
  • Take regular tea time each day around 3 or 4 and RELAX

 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS Wayne Dyer (2003). There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. Dyer earned a Doctorate of Education in Guidance and Counseling, and is a prolific author. His first book that i read in the 1970's, Your Erroneous Zones, profoundly influenced my thinking as a teen.  The theme of this book is that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, that problems are illusions created in the mind by incorrect thinking, and that the solution to these mental problems is to change our thinking in light of the spirit (defined as an energy/intelligence that is the source of all life, i.e., God). Some might call this "spiritual bypassing," ignoring the body in favor of the mind and spirit. The first half of the book is lessons from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Dyer suggests that low frequency is associated with the "negative" and faster frequency with the "positive" [for me, at least musically, lower frequencies don't imply negative emo...
Read more
Image
TURN ON Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays. Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love.  He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured.  The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into socie...
Read more
Image
BODY WISDOM  Therese Bertherat (1989).  The body has its reasons: Self-awareness                                                           through conscious movement.  Berherat takes us on a personal journey in learning body wisdom /awareness using Ehrenfred's method which is radically different than the medical model/method she learned at University. The story unfolds as "sessions" of practices, and the end of the book reveals several "preliminaries" on how to cultivate body wisdom. Among the many practical lessons are:      pause after exhaling to let the body use oxygen before inhaling again--this allows the              body to rest/relax with every breath.      because all parts of the body are integrated, working with one par...
Read more